A name long associated with the Clinton machine has surfaced as a behind-the-scenes figure in the Trump-Russia collusion story, prompting some to speculate that the investigation began at least partly as a dirty tricks operation.

Sidney Blumenthal, a Clinton loyalist from the days of Bill Clinton’s presidency up through Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns, was identified by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., as a source of anti-Trump information passed to the FBI through the State Department. The information is believed to have played a role in the FBI’s launching of the collusion probe that is now in the hands of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

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Blumenthal has long been known as an attack dog for the Clintons, so ferocious a defender that he earned the nickname “Sid Vicious.” As Dick Morris, former adviser to the Clintons (although he has since become a critic) puts it, “If [Bill Clinton] is caught shoplifting for the tenth time, Hillary would have Sidney blame the store’s cameras.”

Blumenthal started out as a journalist, writing for the “New Republic,” the “Washington Post” and “The New Yorker,” before joining the Clinton White House in 1997. He was soon embroiled in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, called to testify before a grand jury by independent counsel Ken Starr, though he refused to answer questions about confidential White House conversations on the matter.

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At the time, journalist Christopher Hitchens submitted an affidavit that Blumenthal had described Monica Lewinsky as a stalker, though Blumenthal denied this.

When Bill Clinton left office, Blumenthal returned to journalism and gained a reputation as being pro-Clinton—so pro-Clinton, in fact, that some fellow journalists felt it...